The Best Part of Waking Up
by Mejhiren
Summary: A series of modern AU oneshots/drabbles, each depicting a typical morning in the life of a certain character or pairing and inspired, of course, by the old Folgers tagline, so coffee should make an appearance somewhere in each installment. Smut, fluff, angst, and humor may all apply. Cross-posted from AO3.
1. Luka & Johanna

_**A/N: **This is not **WtM** and not **Strawberry Time**, a fact of which I am painfully aware. :( My life is extremely difficult and disheartening at present (and has been for the past several months) so I decided to use some of the quiet moments to try to peck away at this ridiculous project I've had in mind for several years. And wonder of wonders, some prose came out._

_I really love (and ship) this particular pairing and this is my first attempt at writing them "on screen." Smut may follow._

* * *

**Luka/Johanna**

The best part of waking up is something Johanna Mellark is loath to admit outside her own head. It's the damn Folgers commercial that is being married to Luka. Coffee and kisses and the brown-haired little peep-peep burrowed against her chest.

Luka isn't an "O-dark-thirty" riser like the rest of his family – with his overnight shifts, he's usually en route to bed during the busiest part of their day – which is handy because Johanna has no desire to open her eyes before 7:00am – ideally, 10:00am, but that would mean not seeing Elske before she leaves for preschool. Of course, when Luka's on overnights Elske ends up in bed with her mama most of the time anyway, and like most youngsters she kicks like a mule in her sleep, but then there are tiny arms and puppy-soft breaths and baby-bird hair under Johanna's nose – things she never thought to experience, much less enjoy.

They worked overnights together for a while, but after Elske came along they had to reevaluate. Overnights meant picking up the baby at breakfast-time and falling into bed for maybe six hours of bad and broken sleep, interspersed with inarticulate arguments as to which of you was more tired when the baby wanted something twenty minutes after you finally dozed off.

Luka's mother, divorced and lonely, would take her in a heartbeat for as long as they wanted. Her heart had broken with longing for a daughter, and the upside of having three sons – admittedly, the gentlest, sweetest boys alive – was that they all kicked off their own generation with girls. Raisa was spoiled for choice when she wanted a granddaughter to watch, but when it came to Elske, Luka and Johanna had to decide whether they wanted to miss two-thirds of their baby's day or stagger their departures so one of them could always be home with her. It meant seeing less of each other, especially during those miserable toddler days, but it also meant being able to hand her off as you reached your wits' end, and with Elske in school now, things are finally starting to level out.

Johanna smiles at the distant gurgle of the steam wand, pecks her daughter's head with a kiss, and commences the mental countdown. Hazelnut triple-shot latte arriving in three minutes or less, hand-delivered to her in bed by the sexiest man alive.

Luka was a devastatingly handsome teen, and marriage – and fatherhood – fit him like the proverbial glove. It doesn't matter that Johanna's a paramedic as well; it makes her husband no less hot in his uniform, and the fact that he's still wearing it at this moment means he had a quiet night.

"Hey chicken," he says with a crease of his wicked dimples, setting the mug on the nightstand and crouching to kiss her forehead. "Peet was wondering if Chicken Little could come over and play with Ashpet today."

_Saturday,_ she realizes with a slow, decadent smile. Ordinarily that means errands with the squeaker while Luka sleeps, but cousin play-dates mean an opportunity to join this beautiful man in bed, for fun – or, as often as not, for additional, unadulterated, _glorious_ hours of sleep.

"When?" she wonders, and his dimples deepen deliciously.

"He's downstairs right now," he replies.

Johanna leans across their sleeping daughter for a long drink of latte – perfect as always: piping hot, silky-frothed and nutty and pleasantly bitter all at once – and settles back to stroke Elske's hair. "Think he'd take her like this?" she wonders wistfully and Luka holds up their daughter's always-packed overnight bag, patterned with pink and purple owls, with a grin.

"If we play our cards right, there might even be a sleepover to follow," he reveals.

She kisses Elske's head with embarrassing fondness and slips out the opposite side of the bed. "I need the bathroom," she says. "Meet you in there?"

He scoops up the little girl – as heavy a sleeper as her mother – and carefully hefts her up to rest her head on his shoulder. Like every other aspect of Luka as a father, it's disgustingly adorable. "Dressed or not?" he mouths.

She rolls her eyes. "Ask a silly question."

Seven minutes later her husband comes in to find the shower running and Johanna waiting topless in his pajama bottoms, perched on the toilet lid like she's waiting for her stop on the subway. "I couldn't decide," she says frankly. "Too many choices."

"_Mamma mia,_" he murmurs in appreciative reply, one dark eyebrow arching as he edges her legs apart and slides down to kneel between them.

Johanna's small-framed but buxom, with an everyday cup-size equivalent to the average mother's nursing proportions. The kind of woman who wears two bras at the same time – one for containment and one for support – and for all that she's always talked frankly about sex matters, at heart she's a voluptuous, vulnerable tomboy. Luka's the only man she's ever been with, and the first time he saw her breasts – Homecoming Night of senior year – he'd been perplexed by the two bras and agog at what lay within.

They'd been friends and running partners before dating and had even spent platonic nights together when Luka started having nightmares about Peeta's snowmobile wreck, and it was no mystery that Johanna was busty, let alone to Luka, who had secretly, wildly adored her for years. But the unencumbered dimensions of her were something else entirely, and her face had burned at the slack-jawed Homecoming King sitting on her bed, gaping at her bare breasts like they'd just arrived from another planet.

_Well, I can't very well run track with _this_ bouncing on my chest, now can I?_ she'd snapped in response, cupping and jiggling the offending flesh in his face. _Or throw a javelin._

Luka promptly made it clear that he had absolutely no complaint with those _magnificent_ breasts, nor shortage of interest in them.

"Cor blimey, Hanna," he sighs around a damp mouthful of nipple. "You realize you're the best of all worlds, right?"

She bends to press a kiss to his dark blond hair; a tender, even sentimental gesture, and her husband chuckles softly. "Case in point," he says.

Johanna always thought she'd be a voracious lover, but while she and Luka have certainly enjoyed lively interludes – saucy stripteases, deep purple love bites on unexpected parts of the anatomy, sex on or against some very creative surfaces and in a few creative positions – what she loves most is this everyday sort of intimacy. Undressing each other after work, sharing a shower, then just fitting together like it's the next step in the process. More than once they've done it right here on the toilet lid: halfway through drying off, she sits Luka down, slips him inside her and rides him quietly, toes curling on the tiles, her arms hugging his shoulders and her cheek resting against his hair.

They've both known pain and loss, and their work, while meaningful, contributes its share. Soft, sweet sex can be the best balm in the world.

"How badly do you need that shower?" she asks – because if she's going by how great he smells right now, it's _years_ in the future – and he lets her nipple slide from his mouth.

"Paperwork night," he says, taking a breast in each hand and kneading gently. "No calls. Figured I could go another day before washing my uniform."

"Better get you off your knees, then," she replies with a crooked smile and helps him to his feet before shutting off the spray.

It's funny – pleasantly so – how little those practical interruptions truly impact desire. The first time after the birth that Luka went down on her – a moment they'd both been aching for – he had _just _settled between her bent legs, all soft slippery lips and flickering tongue, when Elske let out an almighty wail from the bedside crib, her brand-new diaper filled to the brim and reeking to high heaven.

_Don't. Go. Anywhere,_ he ordered raggedly.

_Wouldn't dream of it, _Johanna panted back.

Some twenty minutes and six verses of a lullaby later, Luka threw his t-shirt in the general direction of the hamper and himself into bed, smelling faintly of Lysol and lavender, where he promptly buried his face between his wife's legs with an almost desperate moan. Adrift between dozing and delayed desire, Johanna gave a bemused laugh at the lap of that somehow-still-eager tongue and rolled over to straddle his face, then nestled herself down over his mouth.

A groan of _Manna from heaven!_ resonated deep between her legs, and she shifted forward to brace on her forearms – a position that thoroughly delighted Luka, as it gave him dangling breasts to enjoy at his leisure, though he remained at his post much longer than she had dared hope for, like she was a four-course meal and he meant to savor every last taste. She was leaning heavily on her arms, eyes closed and mouth slack in bliss, when Luka slid up her body to sample a breast and prodded hopefully between her legs with the most glorious erection she'd ever felt.

In spite of herself and all the very grown-up pleasantries they were in the process of enjoying, Johanna giggled. _Where'd your pants go?_ she demanded, because somehow in all that time she'd never felt him pull them down.

_They got tight,_ he grunted from the valley between her breasts. _Needed some air._

_I don't think you'll find any where you're headed,_ she bantered back, but he'd left her so wonderfully soft and slippery with his mouth that she couldn't help dipping down to slither along the length of his penis, lubricating him and savoring the friction all at once.

_And here I thought you chose this position for _my_ benefit,_ he said tightly, sucking hard at the curve of one breast as a hot, eager drop trickled from the head of him against her clitoris, and she chuckled.

_Your engine was due for a lube job,_ she teased, gliding shamelessly along his length, _and this one's free._

_Call it a draw,_ he replied, looking up with a wicked grin. _I think I serviced your engine first._

_Thoroughly,_ she conceded, and sank down to envelop him to the root. It had been so long and exquisite a build-up that Luka gasped a little, both at the swiftness of her movement and the relief of finally being inside her.

Luka still makes the most beautiful sounds in bed – or wherever they choose to be intimate.

She unbuttons his dark blue uniform shirt and drapes it neatly over the towel rod, then tugs up the t-shirt beneath for a glimpse of his belly. "Where's your sticker?" she asks with a very good imitation of genuine puzzlement, pulling off the garment entirely and dipping behind him to peek at his back, as though she might have placed it somewhere different last time.

"I'm nowhere near due for a servicing," he replies with more tenderness than humor and tugs her back around for a long, soft kiss. "But I bow to the wisdom of my mechanic."

She looks him up and down and frowns thoughtfully. "Well, that belt needs to go for a start," she says, unbuckling it quickly, then undoing the button and zipper beneath. He's erect, of course – the slightest glimpse of her breasts will do it – and she shucks down his pants and boxers in one fell swoop.

He left his shoes and socks out in the bedroom, so with a few quick shifts she's got a fully naked husband in her sights, and as always, Luka is a sight to behold. Not as _endowed_ as certain other members of his family, maybe, or so she's gleaned, but then she's never had any complaints with the equipment. It's beautiful – perish the thought – and so very, wonderfully functional. She could climb on him right now and climax before her latte has had time to cool.

"If you're planning on the 28-point inspection, I'm not sure I can make it today," he says lightly, and she scrambles out of her pajama bottoms – well, _his_ – and mounts him in a leap. She's small enough that this position isn't too strenuous for Luka, even at the end of an overnight shift, and they reinforced the towel rod behind him years ago for this very purpose. His hands grip her buttocks for support but he lets her guide the action entirely, squeezing his hips with her strong legs and grinding fiercely at their junction as though she would wring him out, her hands white-knuckled on the towel rod.

"_The best of all worlds_, Hanna," he groans, sucking wetly at her collarbone, and then she clenches, her head falling back and eyes closed tight. He fills her with a shudder and a jerk of his lean hips and suddenly they're on the floor in a knot of melted limbs, with Johanna in her husband's lap and his work shirt – no worse for wear – fallen down over her head.

He lifts it off with an utterly foolish grin and kisses her wet and deep, like a foolishly grinning boy has no right knowing how, then leans back to consult his wristwatch. "Three minutes down," he informs her. "How do you want to spend the rest of the day?"

* * *

_**A/N:** I headcanon in modern AUs that Luka was with Peeta when he had the accident that cost him his leg and that Luka consequently went on to become a paramedic (as did Johanna), which is why he's no longer (actively) at the bakery._


	2. Raisa (Mrs Mellark)

_**A/N:** Minor warning for Jack/Raisa content (no smut), which probably won't come as a surprise to anyone who's read my other stuff. Includes nods to **True North**/general Jack headcanon._

* * *

**Raisa (Mrs. Mellark)**

Waking up is rarely a pleasant experience for Raisa Mellark, but if she had to choose a best part, it would be the single gumdrop she always slips from her bedside drawer before she opens her eyes.

Gumdrops used to be everywhere when she was young, cellophane bags for 59 cents or two for a dollar at every gas station, but she has to look for them now. And she does, tirelessly.

After the divorce – the rage, grief, betrayal; the heartbreak over the pregnancy, so much worse than the affair – she quit pretending. The smell of baked goods abruptly made her nauseous, so she tried every carb-less diet she could find. She lost 30 pounds without trying, not that she had much of an appetite then anyway. She ordered acorn flour online and bought the wildest things she could find at the farmer's market: fiddleheads, ground cherries, mushrooms of all kinds. She pulled needles off pine trees in the park and steeped them for tea. She ordered venison and elk from Rooba and learned to eat lake fish, which she hated, because it reminded her of him.

She reaches around the gumdrop bag – she got anise today; purple, the very best of all – for the bottle and spritzes a cloud of bay laurel before opening her eyes at last to regard the framed picture on the nightstand.

She's made scans of this and even attempted to paint it, but nothing seems to match the perfection of one decades-old photograph.

A wedding photo, but not from hers, and not even from a particularly memorable wedding – except, perhaps, it was Rooba's happiest till now. After two dismal marriages ending in rapid widowhoods, Rooba was introduced to Micah Tolliver – a working-poor, blue-collar boy who'd been widowed himself – and thought she'd found a fairy tale come to life. The wedding was small but lavish, particularly for a third one: a veritable folk festival with rustic breads and haunches of beef and great goblets of mead, and Rooba insisted on dressing the groom and his best man accordingly in drop-sleeve blouses and vests.

Which is why Jack looks like a pirate king in the photo.

Jack Everdeen was Micah's first cousin and, to be honest, Rooba's first choice, but he was soundly married to Alyssum then, though no children had come along yet. He had presented Micah to twice-widowed Rooba as an ideal husband and, as always, Jack knew best. Rooba lost Micah too, ultimately, but their marriage was the happiest time of her life, save for recently. Maybe.

Raisa openly disliked and avoided cheerful, utterly unobjectionable Micah because the truth was too painful to acknowledge. She had been married to Janek for four years then and they had Marko, the three-year-old the size of a first grader. Janek was getting restless to start Baby #2, but it was a simple longing for progeny; for a sibling for their son. He enjoyed the sex well enough, but Raisa had rebuffed most of his attempts, for a myriad of reasons.

Jack was Micah's best man and only groomsman, and Rooba only had one sister. Which is how Raisa ended up arm-in-arm with Jack Everdeen at the front of a church.

Miserable as she was at the time, she looks pretty enough in the photo. Ribbons and roses in her hair – Rooba wore her own long then too and insisted they have ringlets – and a peach-colored peasant dress in a copy of Rooba's white one.

She's amassed plenty of pictures of Jack since, but this is the only one of them together.

Janek had Marko for the reception – Janek took charge of Marko most of the time anyway – and the awkward silence finally broke during Micah and Rooba's first dance, complete with an endearing trail of the bride's three tow-headed ducklings. Jack smiled at the sight of the children, a bitter and indulgent expression all at once, and asked quietly, _Why do you hate my cousin?_

Raisa stared down at the lean, beautiful hand resting beside hers on the tablecloth. _I don't, _she answered in a small voice. _I really, really don't. I thought you of all people would see that._

His hand twitched against the linen and his pinky finger nearly brushed hers. _But you didn't want her to marry him, _he insisted quietly. _Why not?_

She gave him the same answer she had given to a remarkably similar question some six years before, then as now with the same meaning. _You know why,_ she whispered.

_We're due to join the dance, _he said, still without looking at her, and turned his hand palm-up. Raisa, trembling, laid hers in his palm and let him lead her onto the dance floor, where he rested his opposite hand on her waist in the sort of modified social slow-dance appropriate for a couple married to other people.

She'd known this was forthcoming but had tried not to let herself anticipate it, since both her spouse and Jack's were guests at the wedding, and she closed her free hand around his shoulder with a soundless croon.

_There's a patio, you know,_ he said suddenly, still not meeting her eyes. _With torches for the cold._

_Okay,_ she replied without hesitation.

There were enough couples dancing that they could slip away unnoticed, and the patio _was_ cold, even with the merry semicircle of torches. Raisa had forgotten the fur wrap Rooba had rented for her back in the hall and Jack had no coat to offer, even had he wished to, but somehow the brutal midwinter chill didn't seem to matter.

She was alone with Jack Everdeen for the first time since that impossible New Year's night, when he kissed her and asked her to marry him and she told him in no uncertain terms that she could never do any such thing.

_He didn't mean it,_ she'd told herself ever since, through her tears. _It was a joke; a gag._ He was rebounding fiercely from the girl he loved getting back together with her old boyfriend – Alyssum, now his wife of four years, then girlfriend and fiancée of Janek, now Raisa's husband of four years.

_No kids,_ she blurted, at a loss for anything else to say. _Are there…complications?_

_It's not complicated, _he said simply, sadly. _Alys doesn't want any._

Fury and sympathy roared up in her chest. _Did she tell you that before you got married?_

Jack tipped his head in noncommittal acknowledgement. _She had reasons, but it seemed like they might change over time. I told her I was okay with whatever she wanted, and I am. Really._

She ached to kiss the weak smile from his lips, or coax it into a true one. _I'm so sorry, Jack,_ she murmured.

His eyes – birch-silver – riveted suddenly to hers. _Say that again,_ he told her.

_I'm so sorry,_ she repeated in an even gentler tone, taking a half-step forward. _Truly I am._

He rubbed at those stunning eyes in a gesture somewhere between frustration, exasperation, and desperation and took the half-step forward to meet her. _"Jack,"_ he said raggedly.

_Jack,_ she whispered back.

They weren't out there long, and certainly not long enough. The kisses he covered her mouth with were more wonderful than anything she'd experienced in four years of marriage to Janek, and they clung together behind the arborvitae, her face buried in his chest.

Bay laurel, crushed roses, torch smoke, and arborvitae. She's tried all her life to recapture that scent but she never will, not without the musk of Jack's body.

_There's a getaway car, you know,_ she told him through her tears. _If you don't want to go with me, you could always just take it yourself and run._

_I love her,_ he said, but there were tears in his voice as well, and she didn't press further, just held and held and held him.

The moment was broken by, of all people, Hazelle Hawthorne, Jack's cousin on the other side, then enormously pregnant and somehow still breathtaking in her caftan. _Jackie, don't mean to intrude, but they want to do the speeches soon, _she announced to the empty patio. _So if you see Rooba's sister, better round her up too._

Raisa sometimes wondered whether Hazelle wasn't an even better hunter than Jack.

_Can you try to be happy for her for five minutes?_ he entreated softly when Hazelle had gone, kissing a tear track from Raisa's cheek.

_I _am_ happy for her,_ she assured him. _It's me that I hate, not Micah. Me that I'm crying for._

Jack closed his eyes and the distance between their mouths once more.

Janek periodically wore a beard in winter but it never felt the way Jack's did against her skin.

A long, heartbreaking kiss later, Jack tucked sprigs of arborvitae amid the roses in her hair. _A winter queen,_ he declared her. _You would've looked like this for our wedding._

Raisa painted a picture after called _The Winter Queen_ – a miniature, really; wallet-sized, if he was so inclined, and mailed it to Jack at his workplace. She never heard a word about it, before or after his death, and liked to think sometimes that it had burned with him.

The steadfast tin soldier and the paper ballerina.

She painted that too, once, never mind Jack was hardly a soldier and she nothing like a ballerina. Painting didn't make the grief hurt any less, but it gave her a way to express it.

And of course, not all of her artwork was created out of grief.

She starts a pot of coffee – a half-pot only, since there's no one to share in it – and lingers by the mantel as it brews, looking at the photos of her precious granddaughters. A veritable rainbow of beautiful little girls, with a whisper of her in every face, and the loveliest of all – both objectively and subjectively – is the eldest, Ashpet. The daughter of Raisa's youngest son and Jack's oldest daughter, with Jack's mother's name.

People rightly say that they see equal measures of Peeta and Katniss in her black curls, but Raisa sees someone else. Micah Tolliver had curls, like his Everdeen mother, and Jack might've had them too – or at least, his daughter might.

Raisa heard once that Alyssum finds Peeta's son disarming to look at sometimes with his wavy blond hair, gray eyes, and olive skin. He is, after all, a combination of the two men she loved and bore children for. A boy named Janek with Jack's eyes.

But Raisa sees Jack in Ashpet: herself and Jack. The daughter they would have had, because Jack fathered daughters where Janek fathered sons, only there would have been hazel flecks in her blue eyes and they would've named her Elspeth, after Jack's grandmother.

Raisa paints her too, more often than she would ever admit to the counselor she still sees twice a month. Those sessions are for company and simple comfort, not for confession – and anyway, she's not interested in stopping, or ashamed of it. She's always prepared to pass off the subject of those paintings as little Ashpet if anyone asks, but of course, no one ever does.

She slips on a cardigan and steps out onto the back porch, savoring the sharp cold and the sweet tingle of star anise on her tongue as she breaks a sprig of arborvitae from the hedge and tucks it behind one ear. Her hair, once a vibrant strawberry blonde, has faded to an ashy ginger, but she can't bring herself to cut it short, like older women are supposed to, or have it dyed a more respectable shade.

She makes a breakfast of toasted acorn bread with honey, pours herself a mug of coffee, and sits at the kitchen table with her sketchbook.


	3. Gale & Madge

_**Spoiler Alert: **This installment was not possible without the appearance of a side pairing that will also feature in **Strawberry Time** but has yet to be introduced there. If you don't want the surprise spoiled, you may wish to skip this one._

_If you choose to proceed: Gadge smut may follow._ ;)

* * *

**Gale/Madge**

Madeline Hawthorne, high school humanities and piano teacher, had the questionable sense to marry a gas-station coffee drinker.

Oh, he's an exceptional specimen, to be sure – a fit and gorgeous firefighter who plays in a hockey league with several of his cohorts and goes hunting with others – not to mention an entirely satisfactory lover and a wonderful father to boot. But Madge would be lying if she didn't admit that the best part of waking up involves a delightful little bit of cheating on her husband.

She sets a secret alarm on her phone but almost always manages to wake in advance of it, so eager for that sip of stolen bliss, but she's a little slow to silence the vibration today because Gale has a hand inside her pajama shirt, unconsciously palming her breast, and for a moment she's genuinely torn. It's 5:30 – time and plenty for a tryst here before she needs to get ready for work – but Gale's just come off his three-day shift and is snoring softly against the back of her neck. His touch always feels so decadently _good_, especially after 72 straight hours of hoping and praying that he comes home safe and sound, but once again, her secret love wins out.

Slipping from his arms, she pulls on her robe and peeks in on Damson and her guardian wolfhound before tiptoeing downstairs in the dark. She steps into the clogs she always leaves at the front door and lets herself out as stealthily as possible, because the last thing she needs right now is Pilot bounding and baying after her in hopes of an early walk.

She always enjoys the walk to the neighbors' back door and wonders from time to time if anyone observes her and draws their own conclusions.

Her knock is answered promptly by a crisply coiffed redhead with a badge, who grins as he declares, "You're late."

"_Seconds_," she retorts, but good-naturedly. "There was havering."

"Get you in, then," he cajoles, and she steps into the kitchen.

Briony is dozing at the head of the table as she nurses a small black-haired bundle, and she waves absently as Madge approaches. "Have one for me," she insists in a slur. "_Sooooooon…_"

Madge kisses her friend atop her weary head and takes the chair to Briony's right as Darius slides over a hefty stoneware mug: freshly ground Guatemalan Antigua, French pressed, with no sugar and just the right amount of cream.

Sheer, buttery heaven in a cup.

Darius may be a cop but he grew up in the Capitol, with coffee bars and roasteries on every corner. The kind of coffee they scoop preground from a can and brew in a massive urn – the kind of coffee every cop and firefighter and paramedic just accepts as part of the job – is as mortifying to his taste buds as to Madge's, maybe moreso.

She's never quite confirmed it, but she suspects he was a nights-and-weekends barista in high school, and made very good tips to boot.

"I love you," she says ardently, and Briony breaks from her stupor sufficiently to giggle.

"Can have him for a little if you want," she informs Madge. "Poor man is so patient."

This most recent labor was especially rough on Briony, complete with a second-degree tear. Alys Mellark stitches like a fairy with spidersilk, but healing is a slow process and the baby prefers cluster feeding to sleep. So in indelicate terms, it's been awhile since Darius has gotten any.

"Madam, you offend me," he says gently, tugging a chair alongside his wife's and kissing first the downy little head at her breast, then her cheek. "If I'm missing anything in the bedroom department, it's being able to do things to _you_.

"_Sorry,_" he mouths to Madge, but she brushes this away with perfect understanding.

Darius has always been an incorrigible flirt, but once he met Briony, that was that. The pair struggled with infertility – on his side – for several years, so their children are particularly miraculous, and he can't help trying to shoulder some of the responsibility for her current discomfort.

Briony started out as housecleaner to Madge's family, moving up to Home Health Aide to Mrs. Undersee as needed and ending up as Mayor Undersee's personal assistant. It was a bit like having a grown-up, live-in pal for only-child Madge, though the pair didn't become friends as such till Madge was in high school, and when Gale put an offer on the big old house next to the little bungalow Briony and Darius called home, both women were in high alt.

Of course, it didn't hurt that their husbands had a similar friendship, dating back to the night when fresh-on-the-job Darius went to investigate "suspicious behavior" at the Hawthorne house and found 14-year-old Gale attempting to singlehandedly butcher the deer he had shot – several times, and not very accurately – without a license. The Hawthornes were poor and in bad need of the meat and there was ultimately no harm done, and these days Darius and Gale hunt together, though of course, Darius will always be the better shot.

Madge marvels that he's never given away their secret, such as it is.

A determined knock rattles the door and she realizes, with far more sadness than shame, that the game is up.

Darius meekly admits his friend, who looks like a rumpled unshaven thundercloud at this hour and yet still manages to be jaw-dropping, even in a bathrobe and slippers.

"I was holding something," Gale addresses his wife, eyes narrowed in sleepy consternation as he makes a cupping gesture with the hand that had been palming her breast so very recently, and she blushes. "Half-awake at an hour where I can still enjoy my wife's company, and away she slips. I thought you went to the bathroom," he accuses. "And by sheer dumb luck, I heard the front door squeak, so I look out the window and see you sneaking over here. And for what?" he demands.

"Coffee, bro," Darius reveals with a grin. "I only brew the best in town. The girl can't help it."

"But – I make you coffee every morning!" Gale sputters, gaping at Madge as though he's never seen her before.

This, alas, is true. She suspects it's a remnant of poorer days, when it was Gale's responsibility to feed three younger siblings and his hardworking widowed mother. As a housewarming gift to welcome them home from their honeymoon, Hazelle had installed a massive, ancient percolater – 50 gallons at the least, Madge thinks – that she bought from a church rummage sale, and Gale makes sure it's brewed full every day.

Which might not have been so bad except they'd honeymooned in Italy, where it transpired that Gale bore a striking resemblance to a supermodel named Massimo – who, as luck further had it, was rumored to be "getting serious" with a blonde American actress or heiress or somesuch (Madge was never entirely clear on the role she was playing behind those ridiculous oversized sunglasses). So not only was there no end of splendid coffee about, most of it was presented with the compliments of the proprietor, to which even Gale couldn't object.

Indeed, their similarity to the celebrity couple had scored them free bottles of wine, hotel upgrades, even complimentary dinners – in short, all the little luxuries they had budgeted without. Gale took to the Italian high life remarkably well, and while it was a fleeting holiday, Madge was certain his taste buds would come back to the States with a craving for quality espresso.

And then he saw his mother's housewarming gift – the church coffee maker – and gave a whoop of joy.

"As it happens, I make her coffee every day too," Darius replies, cheerfully hurling Madge under the metaphorical bus. "Man's gotta do something when his wife is off caffeine."

"I approved it," Briony chimes in. "Invited her to join us even before that."

Gale looks appropriately aghast at the notion of his wife enjoying clandestine coffee threesomes with the neighbor couple. "But – I got you the pot with the auto-brew timer and Sneak-a-Cup function!" he persists.

Madge blinks, as this is news to her, albeit adorable. For the rest of her life she will gleefully replay Gale exclaiming "Sneak-a-Cup" in her head. "And when did this happen?" she wonders.

"Next month, for your birthday," he says, equal measures frustrated and downcast at having to give away the surprise. "It's in the garage, already wrapped. All you ever have is that little beaker, which is nowhere near enough for a day."

He means her French press, of course, which she uses when the neighbors are away or she needs a top-up or she's short on time for a coffee _klatch_. And to be quite fair, Gale _knows _how much she loves coffee, and that the fuel oil he brews isn't to her liking, though he makes sure it's always available just in case. He's bought her all the flavored creamers to make it more palatable and now and again brings home tiny, pretty pre-ground bags labeled _Caramel Pecan_ and _Cinnamon Vanilla_ to brew in her "little beaker."

"It's red," he adds glumly. "Damson thought you'd like it."

Madge grins like a loon and comes over to smack a kiss on one stubbly cheek. He really _is_ a remarkably good husband. "Oh, _Massimo_," she sighs.

"_Stai zitta,_ Aleah," he retorts.

"You two are so stinking cute," Briony declares. "Madge so badly doesn't want to turn you posh and yet it keeps trickling over."

Madge would correct her but there's more than a germ of truth in it. "Come on, you sad cuckold," she says affectionately, taking Gale's arm and winding it about her waist. "I'm sure we can find something to fill that poor hand of yours."

"Child present!" Darius hisses, but in the merriest of stage whispers. Impish Madge doesn't come out all that often and even less frequently before an audience, and she delights him greatly.

"You didn't finish your coffee," Gale puzzles as they leave the house.

"I'm good," she assures him.

Damson and Pilot are still sleeping like logs, and there's still time for a bit of early-morning shenanigans if they don't draw it out _too_ long. Madge hooks her robe on the back of the bathroom door and slips out of her pajamas, anticipating the direction these next few minutes will take, but Gale lingers in the doorway, frowning absently at her naked back.

"Why didn't you say something?" he asks quietly, and she looks over one shoulder with true remorse.

"Because you've already done so much," she says, and they both know what she means. Gale is as blue-collar as they come, and Madge was born on the opposite end of the spectrum. They accepted this the moment they embarked on a relationship, with no intentions of changing each other to better fit their own lifestyle and inclinations. Of course, there were plenty of compromises to make – Gale wanted a honeymoon someplace warm with a beach and Madge wanted castles and cathedrals, so Italy was the natural choice – and without ever discussing it, they each took steps into the middle ground.

Madge had always wanted to learn archery so she asked Katniss to teach her, and now and again she goes bow-hunting with Gale (or for that matter, with Katniss).

Other times she puts on an Empire waist dress and takes elegant shots at a target board in the backyard, because archery is a perfectly acceptable pastime for ladies too and needn't always result in dead things to be butchered.

But it's Gale who has adapted the most, and without acknowledging it – as though he's afraid of being found out. As soon as they closed on the house, he dedicated the "formal dining room" as a library because he knew Madge wanted one desperately. This was in addition to the office-turned-music room where her piano and sheet music stash currently reside, and somewhere in there he got hold of a secondhand upright – _no big deal,_ he insisted – that he somehow, magically, levitated upstairs to the spare bedroom, so she can play whenever she likes, whichever floor she's on. He attends all the faculty events – and interminable student recitals – with her, wearing a tie when it's called for and being downright cordial. He lamented that Damson, starting her first mini-lessons with Mom at age three, was already a better pianist than he is, and so he joins her on the bench – or rather, holds her on his lap on the bench – as they peck out the notes together.

And Madge is absolutely _certain_ he got Italian lessons from someone before the honeymoon, though she still hasn't managed to confirm it.

"No," he persists, coming over to the bed and turning her to face him. "Why?" He's clearly troubled by the question because his eyes don't so much as flicker toward her bare breasts.

"Because I didn't want you to think you weren't enough," she says simply, tracing his cheek with a fingertip.

"So you snuck out of my arms to _have coffee_ with my best friend?" he demands.

"Well…he _does_ brew a pretty awesome cup," she admits with a crooked smile, and suddenly she's on her back on the mattress, pinned by Gale's long, lean body, which is covered by entirely too many clothes.

"My coffee pot is bigger," he growls, and she dissolves into laughter.

"Fifty gallons at the very least," she agrees, envisioning the ancient perc pot, and he slides down her body and off the bed, catching her underwear as he goes.

She's about to protest the departure, never mind she deserves the rejection just now, when she feels his hair against her inner thighs and his tongue traces slowly along the intimate seam of her.

Madeline Hawthorne, high school humanities and piano teacher, sincerely hopes that her students – and their parents – have no idea what happens in this room.

Gale guides her legs over his shoulders and nuzzles deeper, slipping his tongue inside and making her shudder. "I really hope this is better than coffee with Darius," he murmurs.

"Almost," she pants, and tugs him back up over her.

* * *

_**A/N: **Yes, Pilot is a _Jane Eyre _reference. _:)_ Because Madge is a well-read woman and totally into the idea of Rochester!Gale, and she would take sheer delight in her husband bellowing "Pilot!" at random intervals. _

_"Damson" is my headcanon Gadge daughter because it's a wild, beautiful name and a sort of plum, and those Donner girls love their plums. _;)

_And yes: Briony and Darius are (shortly to be) A Thing. I think you'll enjoy them in the Mooniverse._ :)


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